Born in Pennsylvania in 1810, Edwards' family moved to Ohio in 1812. Upon reaching adulthood, Edwards took up the life of a hunter in order to support his family of 16 children. By means of hunting and tracking with dogs Samuel E. Edwards (1810-1895) was able to make a comfortable life hunting bear, deer, racoon, wolf, wild cats, as well as by fishing the rivers. Life was full of danger from the wild animals as well as Indians and other hunters which inhabited the region.
There were frequent battles with a hostile tribe over game, as Edwards relates:
"I told the Indians this was my bear they had caught, and I was going to have it... They did not like this disposition of their game, and one said, 'No, me give you two dollars and keep the bear.' I told him no, I would have the bear-skin, and the dog too; and if my dogs chased any more bear into the woods and they caught them, I should take them from them, and accordingly shouldered the skin and started for home. The Indians cast after me an angry look, but durst not follow me."
On another occasion when forty tribe members accosted Edwards, he took on the entire group:
"...This so enraged the Indians that one of them drew a club and struck me upon the nose, making it bleed badly. Before this, I had been very much frightened, but now all fear forsook me and I replied to his civility with a blow from my fist just over his eye, which laid him senseless at my feet. Another came furiously toward me and attempted to catch my legs... "
Sometimes tables were turned on Edwards and his dogs by the prey they had tracked:
"As he was passing the boat, I sprung upon his back and clinched him by the horns. The water was not quite so favorable a place for fighting with a sturdy buck as terra firma and the brave little animal soon had the best of the bargain, getting me underneath his feet and giving me such a drubbing as I never got from man or beast, before or since... "
Tracking bears was particularly fraught with dangers:
"...I determined then, if I died, to die fighting. I turned about and met the bear face to face,-and most fortunately for me, poor Madge, whom we had left for mortally wounded, appeared just at this crisis for my deliverance, and attracted the bear's attention just as she was springing with open paws upon me... "
At this time in Ohio there were mammoth sturgeon:
"... I fastened a loop of the cord that was attached to the spear around my left hand, and with the instrument of death firmly clenched in my right, I made a bold start toward the young leviathan. I at length swam safely to the shore, the subjugated sturgeon following me at a rapid rate. My friends congratulated me upon having accomplished a very daring feat. We drew the fish ashore, and he measured nine feet in length."
Edwards' book in an unvarnished, straight-forward and simple style give the reader an interesting look into the life of a backwoods Ohio hunter in the early 1800s, probably better than any other book.
